The Reverend Mike Riggins 5/2/21

Love Away the Fear

Psalm 22:25-31
I John 4:13-24

A neighbor has a fence with a sign on it that says, “An 'XYZ' fence, repaired, but

not by 'XYZ'”. According to another Central member who grew up in the

neighborhood, that sign has been there for years. We have spoken to the residents.

They are perfectly lovely people. They like our dogs. In our pit bull world that makes

them stellar human beings. She has told us why they felt compelled to erect that sign.

She told us without rancor, but also without humor. She is still angry about it after all

these years. Have you held onto anger against others for years? Have you held onto

fear of others for years?

Oddly, we seem wired to hang on to toxic emotions. The psychological literature

explains this. Its primary insight is that anger and fear are really just two facets of our

many-sided mechanism for dealing with perceived threats from the external world. It is

difficult to label any emotion as just anger or just fear. Our angers and fears against

others can protect us from taking responsibility for our own flaws. It it's all your fault it

can't be mine. And most of us prefer the comfort of the known to the discomfort and

disruption of change—even changing things that eat away at us. No matter the

explanation, we need not live in anger and fear. Like Dorothy's ruby red slippers in the

Wizard of Oz, we carry our way home with us everywhere we go. That way home is

our God-given capacity to believe in a loving God.

 John tells us “perfect love casts out fear.” He refers specifically to our fear of

isolation—isolation from God and isolation from one another. This entire passage

rests on the theological foundation of how we can remain in a saving relationship with

Jesus Christ. For John, the answer is to believe, to have faith in Jesus as the son of

God. When we receive the gift of faith from the Holy Spirit, we receive also the gift of

connection. When he tells us we can “have confidence for the day of judgment”, he

means that our faith will keep us in God's presence forever. Faith creates connection

with God and with others.

Remember, when John writes of love casting out fear, he refers not to fear of

God, but to fear of losing our relationship with God. We might add that it is our

relationship with God that casts out all fears. The Christian existentialist philosopher

Soren Kierkegaard wrote of the deepest of our fears, the fear that our lives have no

meaning or purpose. In his work The Sickness Unto Death he gave the already

existing German word angst (fear or anxiety) a deeper meaning. For him, angst came

to mean that dread that results from a loss of faith in a loving God who imbues life with

structure and reason. Kierkegaard struggled with angst his entire life. His honesty

about it makes his work incredibly valuable. For though we live 200 years later, angst

describes our current cultural mood incredibly well.

Kierkegaard spent his life seeking reason and meaning. Yet in the end, in his A

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he shared an insight that had come to him

unbidden, without any conscious thought on his part. He discovered he could trust
that meaning and purpose come to us not as a result of our pursuit of them, but as

gifts from God. A Danish Lutheran, he never quite completely lost his faith in God. He

realized that in relationship with God he found whatever peace and confidence (his

word as well as John's) he had. The irony was not lost on him. Calling himself “that

silly Viking goose”, he poked fun at his lifelong quest for what God had already given

him. It is Dorothy's shoes again. We already have what we need to cast out even the

deepest of existential fears: we have the love of God in Christ Jesus. We have a

connection with our creator and redeemer. And how do we know he loves us? Later

we will gather at the table he instituted to teach us about his love.

But if peace is so easy to obtain why do we persist in fear? The two

psychological conditions we mentioned at the outset definitely play their parts. First,

(mostly) subconsciously we need to feel fear. It protects us from seeing our own

complicity in our loss of confidence in God. It cannot be my fault I struggle to believe,

can can it?!? Second, change is hard. Psychological and spiritual change is harder.

As fearsome as angst is, we at least know how to live with it. What if we try accepting

the gift of faith and it does not work for us? Where do we go with our fears then? We

go to the bottle or syringe, to working insanely long hours, to self-help books and

seminars, to any of a list of things we hope will protect us from looking into

nothingness. Because as Kierkegaard also wrote, to exist without a sense of purpose

is to feel nausea.

Commentators have labeled Psalm 22 a “prayer for deliverance from a mortal

illness.” Note that the title is not a “prayer of thanksgiving for having been delivered

from a mortal illness.” In prior verses the author makes it clear he still suffers from

whatever malady afflicts him. But where we pick up his thread he shows confidence in

his eventual healing. “I will tell of Thy name to my people...(for God) has not despised

or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.” What's more, “The afflicted shall eat and be

satisfied...” And sounding a more universal note, “Yea, to (God) shall all the proud of

the earth bow down.” In a world in which many thought sin caused serious disease,

what spiritual confidence it took to author such a poem!

All of which begs the question, where can we get us some of that there

confidence? Where can we find that faith that roots us in relationship with Jesus,

through which he can convey us his peace? Faith in a loving God casts out fear. And

faith is a spiritual gift. In fact in most every place the New Testament lists the gifts of

the Spirit, faith heads that list. How can we receive that gift of faith? In the 17th

chapter of the Gospel this same John wrote, he tells us Jesus made a lengthy prayer

that circled back to address three petitions repeatedly. Jesus prayed that he might be

glorified, that his death on the cross would not prove an ending but a passageway to

his resurrection; he prayed for the unity of his followers; and he prayed that they might

see that he abides in the Father and the Father in him, that they might believe.

Faith in a loving God casts out fear, even the dreadful fear that life has no

meaning. Ask God for that faith—or for more of it—and you will receive it. It may not

come all at once. I once sat down at a picnic table at a beach. Two young people I
knew were sitting at the next table, engaged in a...strong conversation. She was

leaning in, doing most of the talking, staring at his eyes, which he kept focused on his

feet. I scooted as far away as possible so as not to hear what she was saying. (The

other tables were taken.) After a few moments she sighed, made a dramatic shrug of

her shoulders, gave me a half wave, and stomped away.

When the thud of her footsteps faded he finally looked up—and saw me for the

first time. He belonged to our church. He said, “It's great that you're here. In fact, I

think maybe God put you here.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “She's trying to

save me and I keep telling her I already am. She asks me for my testimony. She

wants to know when I first started to believe. And I tell her, 'I don't know, I just have

always kind of known,' and she won't take that for an answer.” I told him then what I

tell you now: the Bible does not claim we have to have a testimony. It tells us only that

we must accept the gift of faith, no matter how or when it comes to us. If you have a

testimony to share, great. Those stories can be inspiring. If you do not have a

testimony but believe all the same, great.

The point is this: faith in a loving God casts out fear. The communion we are

about to share reminds us Jesus loved us enough to die for us. Faith is a gift of his

Holy Spirit. Go get it, or get more of it. Accept the gift. Know peace.